Shadowboxing is a set of four booklets published on the occasion of the Royal College of Art exhibition, also titled Shadowboxing, to make visible the processes of discussion, collaboration and production between artists and curators at different moments between February and June 2011. Contributions take the form of artists’ commissions, interviews and conversations with relevant people from the cultural and political field, as well as essays by the curators.

Issue 1
The dialogue prompted by Giorgio Agamben’s text ‘What is an Apparatus?’ has been central to the development of SHADOWBOXING. Issue 1 reproduces this text including questions posed to the four artists as part of the invitation to collaborate with the CCA students and Marysia Lewandowska’s annotations, which reflect her reading of the text in response to the invitation.

Issue 2
SHADOWBOXING has developed as conversations have unfolded between the artists and curators. What has transpired from this approach over the past months is an exploration of the different ways in which artists enact critique within certain parameters, and an awareness of the paradox: how can one challenge forces that have become so internalised that they are indistinguishable from one’s own shadow? Issue 2 reflects through images and texts the research and the production process of SHADOWBOXING. It also includes the exhibition guide and the programme of events and film screenings.

Issue 3
The act of publication, as defined by the writer Matthew Stadler, constitutes a deliberate political strategy, which enables the formation of a public space through an ongoing circulation of ideas, texts and conversations. Much in line with his thinking, Publication is conceived as a snapshot of the unfolding dialogues that have shaped and continue to inform SHADOWBOXING. The contributions in this issue reflect upon the boundaries between private and public spaces, and how these can be tested or made contingent.

Issue 4/5
A Structure that Wants and To be Another Structure has been conceived as a double issue, where the content of the publications run in parallel. As a whole it both reflects, and confronts the terms used throughout SHADOWBOXING. It includes a text by Wendelien van Oldenborgh and interviews with Lis Rhodes and Rainer Ganahl.

Issue Four/Five is edited by the graduating students on the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, 2011 and is designed by James Langdon.